With the national depression growing with every new day it is important to step back and gain some prospective before we sacrifice all and sundry to the bonfire of public services that is proposed by the coalition government:

• Shouldn’t we rather be asking whether the sixth biggest economy in the world needs to have in place measures to help those at the bottom of its social structure rather than castigate the poor for having chidren they can’t afford?

• Or, that a country that is second in the world for producing original thinkers and world-class academics has an affordable education for all its citizens and well funded universities?

• Or perhaps that a country whose individual citizens’ wealth is measured as 14th highest in the world, above Germany, France and Japan, by the World Bank, has the ability to make sure everyone upon retirement has enough allowance to stay warm and is entitled to a respectable pension?

So let’s remember the UK is a wealthy country that is innovative and punches above its weight in so many ways and look at the bigger picture than the parochial bias of the current short term spending reviews; this morning’s release of the Browne review on higher education was a clear example.

The issues of graduate tax or a tuition fees raise simply a short term smoke screen. As a country we can afford an extra £1 billion for university funding if we look at the bigger picture, that this investment will bring $2.5 billion back into the economy, coupled with the fact that this country is spending far lower than any other OECD country and actually half that of the USA on education.

Let’s get some prospective back – we can afford a socially fair society, we are choosing not to.

COL – you completely miss the point. There is a huge difference between people voluntarily contributing to something and people being forced to contribute.

Ranjit – I never suggested or implied that you are stating anything other than what you have stated. I am merely saying that what you have stated is not the whole story by any means. I’m suggesting that it is simplistic and therefore misleading just to look at how much is spent as a percentage of GDP. Doing so means that you don’t tell your readers that actually the amount spent per student is not half as much as is spent in the USA. More importantly you don’t tell your readers that the tax payer pays much more per student here than the taxpayer does in the US. This completely undermines your suggestion here that the taxpayer can and should pay more.